Skip to main content

What is the climax of Frindle by Andrew Clements?

Andrew Clements's Frindle tells the story of fifth grader Nick Allen and his attempt to create a new word. Nick is inspired to invent a word when he asks his strict English teacher, Miss Granger, where the words in the dictionary come from. When she assigns her students an essay based on the question, Nick uses the opportunity to invent the word "frindle," meaning pen. The word grows in popularity, first with Nick's friends, then throughout his entire school, and soon enough the word is in use throughout his town. His teachers and principal consistently try to stop the spread of the word, but soon realize it is beyond his control.


The climax of the story occurs when Nick's new word becomes so famous that national media outlets begin asking to interview him. This realization inspires Nick's father to sell the rights to the word and invest the earnings in Nick's college fund. Nick's world returns to normal after this; his teachers and school administrators stop trying to punish him and curtail the word, and the national media loses interest as "frindle" becomes a normal term. By the end of the book, "frindle" is a word in the dictionary.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more